Fall of Vienna

The Fall of Vienna (early July 1805) was a battle of the Napoleonic Wars that occurred when Emperor Napoleon I of the First French Empire and an army of 2,103 Grande Armee troops stormed the Austrian capital of Vienna, defeating Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este's 2,139 troops. The Austrians had been weakened by previous defeats, especially the Battle of Ansfelden, during which a large portion of the Austrian army left Vienna and was destroyed in a pitched battle against the French. Napoleon pressed the advantage and moved his army from Linz to assault Vienna, with Marechal Michel Ney and another army marching south from Olmuetz in Moravia to assist Napleon. The French succeeded in storming Vienna, and the Austrians decided to make peace with France. They paid large indemnities to the French and ceased to be an immediate threat to Napoleon's empire; Napoleon dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and replaced it with the Austrian Empire.